1960-05-07 — Page 13

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THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, MAY 7, 1960.

Roderick Mann Rome burns and Bisquit

Why Stewart Granger hates making films

'He prefers ranching,' says his wife

4

Fellini shrugs

Wwith moral indig-

7HILE Rome burns

nation over a film called La Dolce Vita (The Sweet Life), its creator sits in a cafe in the Via Veneto and shrugs.

Federico Fellini, today one of the three or four most im portant fim makers in the world, fu not given to such vioical expressions of opinion as some of hia critics and champlons,

Challenged

Life.

'I do not wish to do

anything about anything'

is now well over two years since Stewart Granger made a picture. And I am beginning to wonder when he will ever make another.

For the truth is that this giant-size British-born actor is now disenchanted with the whole business of filming that he hates the thought to a duct; the Vatican news- live."

of even going to the studios.

And als 10000-acre ranch to Arizona — which is now a pay-

thanks ing roleer??

10 M

vigorous runnlag of il — pro- vides him with all the excuses

he needs To stay away from Hollywood,

When Gronger married Jean Slamons 18 years ago he was probably our biggest box-office star; she was a wide-eyed little girl. Today the beautiful Miss Simmons

Is t big star,

ami

Granger's

slalows.

11.

carcer

127

Bastia

in

the about ranching

as his neigh-

bours."

What abou Miss Simmons? With the vaneb suveensful, and

'I'm prejudiced'

fut that is the way he wants

"I never did make any good finis," he ene told me. "Even

in the old days. So I don't care too much. Jeán is the one with the potential. Her career 19 only just banglating."

the

the foure secure, did she ever think about retiring?

"No, she said.

"Not really. You see, in not like Jimny that way.

い

I a terrible ham,"

Olivier mystery WHAT LIES behind the miden withdrawnd of the new Gusher Him The Entertainer"

So

Now Sinatra has sucked him. And taken a large-sized adver- lisement in Voriely to announce why: ----

Thomas Wiseman's

LIMELIGHT

After the Milan premiere of

When you come to a con- "I used the newspaperman as La Dolce Vita.

man apat clusion, you must do something my man Ague," said Fellini, Et him; #ILOT the Home about it, I do not wish to do "because I was myself a reporter premiere, he was challenged anything about anything. I just and because the reporter has an

Fellini finds it saddening that people are going to see his fim out of morbid curiosity, because they have heard that it depicts the decadence of Roman society, the orgles, the more forms of sensual pleasure.

paper attacked the film and demanded its withdrawal, and Reman Catholics have been forbidden lo pee it.

The Italian Under-Secretary fer Entertainment described it "In view of the reaction of my In Parliament as "a murky

family, my friends, and the

fresco of EL degraded and Amertean mublic. I have misguided life....which aroused instructed 121 aflorucys to amazement, disgust and make a settlement with Albert i dignation.") Maltz and to buform him that

-

Meanwhile, the public flocks fe tefli not write the screen-to see it.

Extention of play for The Private Stavike. "I had thought the major con- sideration was whether or no1 the resulting script would be in the best interests of the Buiteit States...but the

People of taste describe it as amall masterpiece; the lim Ananciers gleefully, count the takings and arrange for is dubbing into half a dozen different languages (the English American public has indicated version will be seen later this

it feels the marahty of ldring | year), And Fellini shrugs.

Albert Maltz is the THOTE cncial maiter, and I will

accept the majorly opinion."

PRANK SINATRA. Can you read that without feeling slightly sick?

'A story'

"My film." he says a little wistfully, "has tecede caBed Can you help wondering whe- Communist propaganda, Catholic ther it was the "morally" of propaganda, amoral, religious, hiring Maltz that counted with scandalous, noble. It is none of Sinatra or the fact that, as these things. I is a story. the producer of the film. he

were boycoiled?

Experience

bizarre

of netual Images

attitude that is in some "way typical of us all today, the atti- tude of curiosity without pas- slon, the attitude of looking on without participating.

"I do not attack the Press; 1 convey a certain melancholy that for so many of us curiosity should have become the biggest passion of which we are cop able,"

In terms

La Dolce shown on the screen, the fir. Fellini

Vita has

made

ณ celebrity,

major

la extremely restrained. Thore figure of the Roman scene. is nothing in it that is even re- About this he is apprehensive. motely pomographic.

to

I have

The objections been on the grounds of what says, not what it shows. Few people suggest that what it says is untrue; they merely feel kital such truths are not for mass consumpx..

"Before the premlere of my Alm." said Fellini, "they show ed a newsreel about life Rome during the previous week which was really far more shocking than my film. But nobody objected to that,

"My justification for making this film is that it is the job of the artist to deal with life, all

Mr Granger is, moment, in the States, recover- ing from an operation which, due to remplications, gave him dubbing is necessary to eliminate would lose money. It the pictury lure. How could I? I am part of life, not just the nice aspects

a very rough Jimu.

One excuse given is that re-

certain background location noises. Another that the film was withdrawn breause it was hoped

i:

10

But Miss Simmons in in Lon- don-making The Grass Greener — so I asked her how she felt about Granger's absence from the screen.

"Well," she said, "I'm pre- judiced, of course, berause

present at the Festival this month,

Cames

My own Information is that the film was withdrawn at the urgent insistence of Sir Michael Baleon, chairman of the

Wrong face

ME CHARLTON HESTON who won tius year's Oscar for Ben-Hur his performance in CON-

"I do not attack the sweet

of it. I am in the depth of La of it. For an artist it is neces- Delce Vita. If It is an attack, sary be should live, that he fall then it is an attack, not from in love, that he tries Judge, but from one of the thing. guilty....

·

"What I try to express in this film is a chacile moment of con- tradiction in our times. What

1 by to have in this film is JL

Curiosity

"Before you Cika GAY

every-

"The best condition under which to work is not

fame.

is best to be lost and unknown and unsure. Fortunately I have

deep ingrained capacity for being unsure and lost, and I think my naturai defences against fame will be sufficient.

"My principal enjoyment in life is to be in a studio moking Alm. Then I am a captain of a grotesque ship of pirates. Then I am really happy.

"For me there has to be an sensual pleasure in almost directing: my camera has to be involved, in love, it you like, with the actresses being photo- graphed. Perhaps this means I am only a little artist. Because I think to be a big artist you must be more ascetic, you must derive less pleasure.",

La Dolce Vita is not a film that beats the big drum for life, that proclaims ü spurious от д hypocritical

that optimism

pany when will distribute it has been talking about his actor. Not only that, but he He saw the filin and, I am told, face. A face, he claims, which noble ambiguity: an expression something is no good you have moral. But it is on the side of

And just doesn't 1 into modern did not bite what he saw.

Jimmy (Granger's real Chris- tlan name) is such a good

who

one of the few people really look like a fim star. When we're Dut together people look at kim ine.

not

"But he's such a mature man, and so sensible about life that ho finds it impossible to take film making seriously. I think he may accept u TV series in Hollywood, but I don't know that he has any future pinùs for films.

"No -- what multers to dinny today is the ranch. That's what he cares about, Running It and making a success of it.

he recommended changes.

times.

in

Culs have now been made. "My face," be suya, "seems to And one whole sequence trans- ft around 1,000 years ago better

Which than anywhere else. posed,

I am continually cust why Biblical thins."

Talking of other people's faces he says: ---

It will be a tremendous blow to Sir Laurence Olivier it the nim runs into trouble. For 1 understand he worked in n for only a token salary, plus a large slice of any profits.

Sinatra's excuse

+

BEFORE the world of show business, grovels,

Mr Frank Sintra

of the hate and the love that to experience . I'am like a life.

one can have for something, for diver who has to go under the 'n way of living.

sea so that I can come up and tell what i have recr

is "It is only to politicians that things are one thing or another, good or bad, right or wrong. To the artist the issues are not that clear,

Saddening

50

"I am for life," says Fellini, with a shrug "what else could I be, being alive."

Off to jail

"But it is necessary to down so I can say I have seen many strange things: rocks and corals and many ish and mer- maid's and makes me an artist is that I come up again to report: if I Greece making a film for the would not be an artist I would stay down there."

monsters. What DOCUMENTARY director

John Schlesinger is La

BBC programme Monitor about the Carl Foreman production of The Guns of Navarone.

"The best urban lace in Alms was Humphrey Bogart's. He made paly one Western (The Oklahoma Kid), and was just

"You ask what is my own ridiculous in 11. His face didn't

Bilitude to life? How can I look right.

answer? On Monday I am bit-

One of the many misinterpre- "The best American face is Bill Holden's. Wednesday I am

contemporary ter, on Tuesday I am funny, on talons of the film has been that The other day he set up his "Nobody's given him the credit

He can play a jet pilot, a lawyer. Thursday I am in despair,

on it is an attack on the Press, happy,

camera inside a sweet shop in he deserves, but it's remarkable For his

because the whole story is seen Athens. The idea was to have picture The

or a newspaper man, for en Englishman to go out Eavention of Private Stonk he other hand, even Holden

On the Friday 1 am sensual, on Satur- through the eyes of u Kossip a shot of a little boy wistfully

dealing has day I am gay, on Sunday I try columnist

ir there, knowing nothing about had hired Mr Albert Maltz, a made only. two Westerns

private pressing his nose against the and to sleep. 19.000 writer who had been blacklisted neither were among his most

scandals and accompanied by a shop ranching, and take over

window and Hcking his for years because of his alleged successful pictures."

troupe of photographers acres of Arizona, What's more,

who is in anticipation of pleasures "Besides. I do not wish to perform a kind of danse macabre in store. he now know just as much Communist leanings.

-London Express Service). [come to any conclusion about around their various victims.

1430

new

on

was

*

by FRANK GOLDSWORTHY

BO

As often happens in these circumstances, a crowd gathered. Spon there were about Greeks looking into the sweet shop window and leking their lips.

Then the pullec arrived and promptly arrested Mr Schle- singer and his unit and took them off to jail. Schlesinger, they said, was making Com-

munist propaganda, showing a crowd of Grecks staring into a sweet shop window suggested that they were starving.

Mr Schlesinger and his whit were, of course, released as soon us Carl Foreman heard of their plight and took the matter up with the Greek government.

-(London Express ServIER).

Bisquit

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THE

ruse that saved Hitler's ships the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Prinz Eugen is now revealed.

Pith helmets, French baralds and German Wrens" were all part of a German bluff to fool the Royal Navy, says a Germati naval officer who sailed in the cruiser Prinz Eugen.

The officer, Fritz Olta Busch, one of Hitler's official war re- porters, has written a book,

the published recently, about cruiser which escaped when the Bismarck

cornered unch gunic.

AVOD

1

Strategy

By the end of 1941, he says, the Germans realised that the Atlantic was no longer enable for largo German warships. It was decided that the three ships blockaded in Brest would be best employed in Norwegian waters.

When It was decided to chance all on a Channel dush, plans were made to enako tho British think that if the ships left at all they would make for the Allan- tic.

*The Story of the Prins Evgen,

Robert fula, 189.

TE

G

A RUSE SAVED HITLER'S

CHANNEL NAVY

Writes Busch: "Lorry-loads decorating, and invitations sent pitk up from them

to their or to the

of tropical equipment, thousands throughout the port of pith

to the French boy friends helmets and khaki Germon equivalent Of With enemy agents with which the uniforms were driven to the and Waals.

Kreat Harbour town. quayside.

swiming.

The caplains of the three "The gratified suppliers of ships were invited to a shoot

these goods had been impressed organised by the Commander- Air raid

with the necessity for silence In-Chlef Group West in Paris on about the order, which meant of February 16. course that the news, having circulated through every enfe, bistro, hotel, and restaurant with the speed of a hurricane, reach ed the ears of the enemy agents the same day.**

Captain Busch concedes that the British were aut in fuct deceived; British plans were stili based on an assumption that the ships would daali up Channel.

"Within a few hours the news Way in London.

"The obloct of the elegant Fully W.Os

Prinz Engon's captain was careless, enough to leave, his formal Invitation on his drade, and found it necessary to go Inyllation cards shooing has near the foreachloved," shore' and then have hlo gún overhauled by the ship's gunnery Next evening. February 11, all department,..

throq ahhs called. But Captain Busch says it was a lucky RAF. Saya Busch! "The story of air raid which gave them such the captain's rilo went round

the ohto like wire. Ah-ah.

But ho claims more success thought the crew. today is

a wonderful undetected start.

It delayed their departure,

for efforts to full the Admiralty February 10, That means we and enabled them to call under have at least a week before we cover of the air-raid moka- anil, perhaps even two.

into believing the break-out, was not imminent,

It was early February and carnival timo et Brest. The Ger- man naval commandant began preparation for a great celebra-

mereen.

"On the same evening the By the time they got to a nowe reached the car of the recording to German records the bisleson, sbor chocked against postwar British dark-haired French girls and dicjomuts—the i.A.J. Hudson Braton maidens who adubciated on the routine sight off Brent 00 willingly with the German had returned to base with radar Premises were requialiomod, maitora and so conscientiously trouble. mallors not to work painting and passed on anything they could

London Express Service),

1lon.

"Mother wasis the money sho bet you that you'd wind up in here,”

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